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Obadiah Rich (November 25, 1777 – January 20, 1850) was an American diplomat, bibliophile and bibliographer specializing the history of Latin America. He was credited with making the field of Americana a recognized field of scholarship by the bibliographer Nicholas Trübner.〔Basbanes 1999, p. 158〕 ==Life and career== Obadiah Rich was born on Cape Cod, at Truro, Massachusetts, on November 25, 1777. He was the son of Captain Obadiah Rich (1758–1805) who commanded the brig ''Intrepid'' in the American Revolutionary War and his first wife Salome Lombard (1761–1807).〔Genealogy at Wellfleet and Beyond〕 He was the older brother of the botanist William Rich. Obadiah Rich was elected to the Massachusetts Historical Society at the early age of 22, and helped found the Anthology Society in 1804, which later became the Boston Athenæum. President James Madison appointed him American consul in Valencia, Spain, in 1816.〔Basbanes 1999, p. 157〕 He was consul in Madrid from 1823, and was working full-time in the book trade in London by 1830.〔 He was again resident in Madrid and in Mahón on the island of Minorca between 1834 and 1835. While in Spain, Rich compiled an extensive collection of ancient Spanish and Latin American books and manuscripts, and was part of the circle of Latin America historians and scholars that included George Ticknor, William H. Prescott, and Washington Irving, who researched his 1828 biography of Christopher Columbus while staying with Rich in Madrid.〔〔Brownrigg 1978, "Introduction"〕 Rich wrote ''A Catalog of Books relating principally to America, arranged under the Years in which they were printed, 1500-1700'' (London, 1832);〔Rich 1832〕 ''Miscellaneous Catalog of Books in all Languages'' (1834), and ''Bibliotheca Americana Nova, or a Catalog of Books in Various Languages, relating to America, printed since the Year 1700'' (2 vols., London and New York, Volume I, 1835 and Volume II, 1846).〔Rich 1835〕〔Rich 1846〕 He died in London in 1850. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Obadiah Rich」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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